From the Palaeolithic painters of Chauvet and Lascaux and the megaliths of Carnac through the Hallstatt and La Tène Celts, the Greek foundation of Massalia, Caesar's conquest at Alesia, and four centuries of Gallo-Roman civilisation to the twilight of Roman Gaul on the eve of the great migrations. Slide across the millennia to read the major events that shaped Gaul before France.
In the limestone gorges of the Ardèche, Aurignacian artists draw lions, rhinoceroses, and horses on the walls of the Chauvet Cave — among the earliest figurative art known.
From the Palaeolithic painters of Chauvet and Lascaux and the megaliths of Carnac through the Hallstatt and La Tène Celts, the Greek foundation of Massalia, Caesar's conquest at Alesia, and four centuries of Gallo-Roman civilisation to the twilight of Roman Gaul on the eve of the great migrations. Slide across the millennia to read the major events that shaped Gaul before France.
In the limestone gorges of the Ardèche, Aurignacian artists draw lions, rhinoceroses, and horses on the walls of the Chauvet Cave — among the earliest figurative art known.
Magdalenian hunters paint the great galleries of Lascaux in the Vézère valley of the Dordogne, depicting aurochs, horses, and stags in a coordinated programme of monumental images.
Two streams of Neolithic colonists converge on what will become Gaul: the Cardial Ware peoples of the Mediterranean coast and the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) farmers of the Rhine and Paris Basin.
On the southern coast of Brittany, Neolithic communities raise more than three thousand standing stones in long parallel rows at Carnac, alongside dolmens and tumuli that mark the dead.
Bell Beaker communities, riding the steppe-derived genetic transformation of Western Europe, spread bronze metallurgy across Gaul. New warrior burials with daggers and archer's wristguards appear from the Rhône to the Channel.
The Hallstatt culture spreads west from the Eastern Alps into Burgundy and the upper Rhône. Iron weapons replace bronze, and a warrior aristocracy buries its dead under great tumuli with four-wheeled wagons and imported wine sets.
Greek colonists from Phocaea in Ionia found Massalia (Marseille) at the mouth of the Rhône, the first city of what will become Gaul. The legend of Gyptis and Protis remembers a marriage alliance with the local Segobrigian chief Nannus.
A new Celtic style emerges around the Marne and the Moselle: curvilinear ornament of palmettes and tendrils, applied to swords, scabbards, gold torcs, and bronze flagons. It will be the visual language of the European Iron Age for four centuries.
A war-band of Senones under Brennus crosses the Alps, routs a Roman army at the Allia, and sacks Rome itself. Only the Capitol holds out. The traditional date, 390 BC, will haunt Roman memory for centuries.
Called by Massalia for help against the Saluvii and the Arverni, the consul Sextius Calvinus and his successors crush the southern Gauls. By 121 BC Quintus Fabius Maximus has earned the name Allobrogicus, and Rome organises the new province of Gallia Transalpina, soon called Narbonensis.
Julius Caesar, proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, halts the migration of the Helvetii at Bibracte and pushes Ariovistus' Suebi back across the Rhine. The Gallic Wars have begun.
After a year of pan-Gallic revolt led by the Arvernian Vercingetorix, Caesar besieges him at Alesia behind a double line of fortifications. The relief army of all Gaul is broken, Vercingetorix surrenders, and the independence of Gaul is over.
Augustus reorganises the conquered territories into the imperial provinces of Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Belgica — the Tres Galliae — alongside the older senatorial province of Narbonensis. Lugdunum (Lyon) becomes the capital of the Gauls.
Crushed by Roman debt and taxes, the Treveri under Julius Florus and the Aedui under Julius Sacrovir rise in revolt. Tiberius' general Gaius Silius defeats them near Augustodunum (Autun) and the rising collapses within months.
Born at Lugdunum, the emperor Claudius delivers a speech in the Senate — preserved both by Tacitus and on the bronze Lyon Tablet — granting senatorial eligibility to leading men of Gallia Comata. Gauls now sit among the patres of Rome.
Exploiting the civil wars after Nero, the Batavian auxiliary commander Julius Civilis leads a great Rhine rising joined by the Treveri Julius Classicus and Julius Tutor. They proclaim an Imperium Galliarum at Trier before Cerialis crushes them on behalf of Vespasian.
During the games of the Concilium Galliarum at Lugdunum, the Christian communities of Lyon and Vienne are denounced and tried. Forty-eight believers, including the slave-girl Blandina and the bishop Pothinus, die in the amphitheatre.
After Valerian's capture by the Persians and a Frankish breakthrough on the Rhine, the legionary commander Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus is acclaimed emperor at Cologne. His Imperium Galliarum will rule Gaul, Britain, and Spain for thirteen years.
Diocletian appoints Maximian as Augustus of the West with his capital at Trier. His first task is to crush the Bagaudae — peasant insurgents in Aquitania led by Aelianus and Amandus — and to restore the Rhine frontier against Franks and Alemanni.
Constantine summons bishops from across the Western empire to Arles to settle the Donatist schism in Africa. The council — the first general gathering of the Latin Church — meets in the imperial residence of Arelate, soon to be the metropolis of southern Gaul.
The Caesar Julian, sent west by his cousin Constantius II with little experience and fewer troops, annihilates a great Alemannic confederation under Chnodomarius at Argentoratum (Strasbourg). The Rhine frontier is restored and Gaul saved from the brink.
Martin, the soldier-turned-monk who founded the monastery of Marmoutier and became bishop of Tours, dies at Candes. His tomb on the Loire will be the first great cult-centre of Gallic Christianity and a model for the missionary bishop of the Latin West.
To face Alaric's Goths in Italy, the western generalissimo Stilicho withdraws troops from the Rhine garrisons. The Gallic limes is left dangerously thin on the eve of the great crossing of the Rhine that will follow on the last day of 406.